STORRS – The UConn hockey team plays Merrimack Friday at the Liberty Invitational in Newark, N.J., a game the Huskies hope looks completely different from the first meeting between these teams two weeks ago in North Andover, Mass.

UConn will wear home whites for the first time this season. The setting will be the neutral ice of the Prudential Center instead of Lawler Rink. Although it's between two Hockey East teams, the game won't count in the conference standings like the first one did.

Those are not the changes the Huskies are concerned with. In the Hockey East opener Oct. 18, Merrimack skated circles around UConn, pinning the Huskies deep through much of the final two periods and into overtime before closing out a 2-1 victory.

"This is an opportunity to show what we've improved on," senior forward Trevor Gerling said. "We've tweaked a few things in our system but I think it's more about our mindset. We took the lead against them [1-0 in the final minute of the first period], and that was the first time we had taken a lead this season, so we kind of just sat back. That's not the mindset we want to have."

UConn (1-3-1) and Merrimack (4-1) face off at 4:30 p.m. A game between Yale and Princeton, which will face each other for the 250th time in history, follows at 7:30. The losers play each other Sunday at 1 p.m., followed by the championship game at 4.

For UConn, this tournament ends a seven-game stretch of games on the road. The home opener is Wednesday against Boston College at the XL Center.

The Huskies hope to be heading in the right direction when they head home. To that end, strides have been made with the way UConn skated in a 4-1 victory over Quinnipiac and a 2-1 loss to Vermont. A rematch with Merrimack brings familiarity – and challenges in disrupting the Warriors offense, breaking out of the defensive zone and establishing offensive momentum.

"The crushed us on face-offs, too, and that's an area we have to be better," coach Mike Cavanaugh said. "We can't be losing 75 percent of our face-offs in a period because we're never going to have the puck. And it's not just the center. The wings have to help out, too, because there were a lot of 50/50 pucks coming off the face-off that they beat us to. That was a problem, for sure."

Yale and Princeton are both playing their season openers. The Bulldogs defeated Princeton 3-2 in the third-place game at this event last season. Merrimack has four one-goal victories and is coming off its first loss, 3-2 at Mercyhurst.

"It's no fun playing the whole game in your defensive zone," said freshman defenseman David Drake, who scored UConn's goal against Merrimack. "But we're more confident as a team and also more comfortable. We also know what to expect now, so that helps. We're going to really stress taking care of the puck instead of just getting it and throwing it around and having turnovers. Quicker passes. You have to know where everyone is on the ice. If someone is right on your back you have to make a quick pass instead of holding onto it."

UConn is 11th out of 12 Hockey East teams in goals-per-game, averaging 1.8. The Huskies, 1-for-13 on the power play, set a season high for goals against Quinnipiac and out-shot a team for the first time at Vermont. Still, Cavanaugh, an assistant under Jerry York at Boston College for 18 years, is waiting for the offense to click.

"Jerry always had a good analogy," Cavanaugh said. "He used to always say offense is like a cat. You call a cat and you're not sure if it's going to come or not. Defense is like a dog. Every time you call a dog, it comes."

The majority of the Huskies' practice Thursday was spent on offense. There are two primary reasons, Cavanaugh said, for the slow start on that front – not getting enough bodies to the net, and not getting the puck to the net often enough.

"I think we're doing a little better job," he said. "But it's an area where we've really got to [improve]. Sometimes you're on that 2-on-1 and you want to pass the puck and make that perfect play to the net. You have to shoot the puck."